What Really Went On Inside Nixon's Oval Office

November 29, 1992|By EVALYNE C. ROBINSON Book Reviewer

Alexander M. Haig's military career began as a young Army staff officer under Gen. Douglas MacArthur. During his career in government he served six U.S. presidents and played crucial roles in the Korean and Vietnam wars and the secret war against Castro's Cuba, in Nixon's establishment of diplomatic relations with communist China and in the aftermath of John Kennedy's assassination and Richard Nixon's resignation.

He served as deputy national security adviser to President Nixon, vice Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, White House Chief of Staff to Presidents Nixon and Ford, Supreme Commander of NATO, and secretary of state under President Reagan.

"Inner Circles" is a memoir of Haig's nearly 40 years of public service - a memoir, Haig says, "of the Cold War as one American experienced it from beginning to end."

In this 600-plus page tome, written with Charles McCarry, a former journalist and intelligence officer, Haig offers his personal perspective of the presidential administrations and political processes of the past quarter century; assesses today's politicians, and speaks candidly about several political scandals.

Haig reveals intimate conversations and details about what really goes on in the Oval Office and about the underground power struggles over policy-making of the politically powerful.

He discusses the changes he has seen unfold in America and the effects of those changes.

Haig closes his book with these lofty words: "Our policy in the Cold War ... was to save the future from destruction. Having done so we must not think of celebrating a victory, but in terms of building a peace. ... The construction of that peace must begin at home. My generations epitaph, I hope, will be this: They made possible a future that redeemed by its justice the suffering of their own time."